Dozen pairs of $13K cowboy boots have been sold at RodeoHouston

Updated 5:01 pm, Friday, March 7, 2014

If you love cowboy boots enough to spend around $13,000 and don't mind waiting a year or so to wear them, there's a deal at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo for you.

For Western-wear novices, boot and apparel retailer M.L. Leddy's in Hall A is daunting. You thought the Justin and Ariat boots you spent a couple hundred dollars on were a big purchase. But at M.L. Leddy's RodeoHouston location, you'll find exotic boots for the cost of a modest wedding or a decent plastic surgery procedure.

Think a facelift and nose job combo.

M.L. Leddy's has been coming to the rodeo to sell their boots, cowboy hats, belts, and other finery for 63 years, dating back the event's time at the Sam Houston Coliseum. They've been in business for 92 years.

The most expensive boots they sell are a pair of custom-made alligator skin boots that top out at $12,645. There is nearly a year waiting list to ship orders. As salesman James Steward reminds, every boot is handmade and their workshops in Fort Worth and San Angelo only churn out 10 pairs a day, on average.

These high-dollar gator boots require the help of six 37-inch alligators, grown in either Louisiana or Georgia and coddled during their short lives.

"These are farm-raised in a small tank. They are less scarred up than live gators. If you use wild gators they are all scarred up," says Steward. The gator has to be watered before it is skinned, to keep their skin moist. The pieces of the hide that don't make it onto boots become wallets or belts.

They need to be treated with lanolin, not wax. If you buy a pair of boots for nearly $13,000, you should probably keep them up. They shouldn't be hidden from view. You need to get your money's worth.

Steward said that they've sold about a dozen pairs of the gator boots this year at RodeoHouston. The boots are a status symbol for sure. They ship all over the world, so there is a chance you can find their label from here to Qatar.

"When you walk into a boardroom or courtroom in these, it shows that you have arrived," said Steward. Their typical customer is an attorney, a doctor, musicians, an oilman, or a pro athlete. They want a nice pair of boots, different from the norm. Country jam band leader Zac Brown wears a 10 1/2 EE, he said. Terry Bradshaw and Nolan Ryan wear their gators too.

As Steward says, these are members of the one-percent of the population who think nothing of spending $50,000 on a Western-wear shopping spree, but they don't want customers thinking that they only care about the A-listers. Farmers and ranchers wear M.L. Leddy's too, maybe not the gators, though.

A quality custom-made boot will start at about a grand it seems, but you'll wear them for life.

"The same guy that makes our gator boot, makes our calf-skin boot," said Steward. "The price is in the hide."

They keep decades-old archives in red ledgers of each customer's measurements if they want to come back and get a new pair or rework ones they have. Sometimes this builds a bridge between generations, with ostrich, gator, or kangaroo hides.

A few years back, a man who graduated from Texas A&M in the '40s was able to get the schematics for a pair of boots he wore back then reworked into a pair for his granddaughter.

"As she was trying hers on, he came out wearing the same boots," Steward says. "It was a pretty cool thing to see."